


Hold the Line

by Ferritin4



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Case Fic, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-16 20:33:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14172858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferritin4/pseuds/Ferritin4
Summary: Saul didn’t mind working with all kinds of joints and he didn’t mind a break from Wolfe’s methods, but he was a regular with the denizens of West Thirty-Fifth for a reason: because, certain individuals excepted at certain times of the day, they weren’t idiots.Certain individuals had his telephone number, and Saul answered his phone on Friday evening to a summons.“I’m surprised you didn’t make Theodore make the call,” Saul said. “I thought you’d be afraid it might bite you again.”“Very funny,” Archie said.





	Hold the Line

**Author's Note:**

> My love for the Nero Wolfe books is longstanding and constant. I love all of the characters in them, Wolfe and Saul and Lily and Cramer and Fritz and especially Archie, because you can't love those books and not be a little bit in love with Archie Goodwin.
> 
> And yet all the love in the world couldn't stop me from writing this, the working title of which was 'Archie Goodwin Gets Hit in the Face with a Rotary Phone'.

They said up to a thousand people could live in one Midtown block alone. Saul would believe it.

He didn’t know how many of them stayed longer than a month, but Lord, did they come. They came in buses and on ferries with cameras at the ready, with dossiers and résumés and all the headshots they needed to be the next big thing in the pictures and the high-rises, and they all packed in like sardines on toast and waited for their moment.

Saul wasn’t a fan of moments, because he’d seen too many of them, and when you looked close enough you could tell they were just regular ticks of the second-hand where people had their eyes open a little too wide.

 

* * *

 

The city had a top side and bottom side like anyplace. It had a high-class frosting where you splashed in a pool on the forty-second floor rooftop spa of some tower, waiting for your money to arrive on wings of cashed-in dreams of a bunch of debutantes from Albuquerque, and then it had a burnt bottom where you couldn’t get enough food in your mouth to make it worth a swallow. Somewhere in between was everyone else, the accountants and the cops and pet-shop owners and the guys like them, like Saul and Orrie Cather and all the rest of their sorry lot.

There was a lot to be said for being in the middle. You could get a hell of a deal if you bargained well, and you could afford to do pro bono work on the side if you were a soft touch, and then, if you felt like your teeth were getting a little sharp but you couldn’t afford the dentist, you could grind them on the doorstep of 454 West Thirty-Fifth Street for ten minutes, ringing the bell at your leisure to make it seem like you had an errand to do.

“Sorry,” Archie said, opening the door just enough to make it impassable. “After five we don’t take solicitors, lawyers, policemen, flower girls, telegraph deliveries, paperboys,” he looked down at Saul’s shoes, “or reprobates. Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’m working on improving my image,” Saul said mildly. “Anyway, he wants to see me, so you’d better wrap up your act, or he’ll have himself a fit and it’ll be you delivering papers.”

“He would never,” Archie said, opening the door the rest of the way.

“He would always,” Saul corrected, going in, “and he’d order a month’s worth and two on Sundays, just to make his point. Is Fritz in?”

Fritz was always in. If Fritz ever went away, Saul would be out of a half-regular job, a lot of pay, and a great deal of hassle, because Wolfe would shrivel up like a raisin and die of an overabundance of good health and sour disposition.

“He might be,” the great deal of hassle said from behind him. “Who’s asking? Like I said, no reprobates; Fritz likes to keep a tidy house, you know.”

“Just tell him I said hello,” Saul said, “from one reprobate to another.”

 

* * *

 

Fritz was always in, but Saul had seen him when he was out, at some time or another, in some kind of a place, maybe once or twice. He didn’t mention it. Saul wasn’t the sort of man who mentioned things like that.

Archie could and would talk about anything, if you told him you’d read an article on it in the paper the day before, but Saul had been raised right, and some things you didn’t talk about.

 

* * *

 

There was a sandwich and glass of beer waiting for him in the study, so Fritz must have been in.

“Mr. Panzer,” Wolfe said politely, “thank you for joining me.” He pointedly did not look at the clock, which read ten past five.

“Always,” Saul said. If Wolfe was wondering where he’d been for the past ten minutes, he could ask around. If Saul knew Wolfe at all by now, he knew he wouldn’t have to.

 

* * *

 

All the jobs were the same, and all the jobs were different.

Everyone Saul tailed had a different story, a different place that they had to be at a different time, and someone different they had to meet there, rain or shine. They had different shoes and clothes and ideas about the difference between right and wrong, but they were all moving, and so they were all the same.

Today’s special was a forty-seven-year-old houseboat of a man who gave Wolfe a run for his flowerpots in the girth department. The man was going from the Citadel Hotel and Suites in Midtown to who knows where and God knew why. What God knew, Saul would let Him keep to Himself.

Saul didn’t ask for particulars about the jobs Wolfe sent him on, not up front. If Wolfe wanted an opinion on a case, he could wait for a minute and half and Archie would give him one. If he wanted an opinion from Saul, he’d let him know what Saul could be opining on when the time came. No need for extraneous details at the upfront. They accrued themselves in time.

Archie liked to say that Saul had a habit of chewing his words a few too many times and that it would end up bad for his digestion, but Archie liked to say everything that occurred to him the second the lights went on upstairs. Saul didn’t make a habit of saying anything. He would speak, as the saying went, when spoken to. In civil company, he would talk about anything except for politics and religion, and two topics off the great list of conversational fodder available to the everyman was not two too many, he thought.

Three topics, anyway, except maybe in the company of fellow reprobates. Otherwise, he didn’t mention it.

 

* * *

 

The houseboat made a nice straight line for the waterfront, and Saul was beginning to think he’d pegged him right off the blocks when he paused halfway down Thirty-Third, filled his not inconsiderable lungs with a breath of fresh river air, and turned left.

Saul did not know how he knew where people were going. He’d had a good long talk with Wolfe about it once, and all it had got him was sure he was damned good at his job and Wolfe tied up in knots about the ineffable qualities of the human intellect, at which point Saul had left him to ineff further at Archie and gone home. He didn’t need to know what about the set of the houseboat’s shoulders told him _left_ , or what about his face said he was going to go into the next right-hand door and trudge up the stairs like a pontoon on stilts, but it did. Saul went around the back and hoofed it up the service stairs until he heard a door open and close.

The houseboat was in a half-lit office, unlocking a drawer and setting a few things down, but he wasn’t alone.

If Saul had learned anything tailing different people, it was that if you looked your part well enough, it was an act.

An act was a green muslin dress cut down to the knees but a little tight around the waist, a smooth knot of blonde hair a whole lot of lipstick. An act was a sweet voice and a revolver hidden in a purse, and it was just enough of an act to make a man think he wasn’t getting taken, until he got taken for all he was worth.

The gunshot was not quite loud enough to carry to the nearest building, and the houseboat went down like a load of bricks. The blonde set to work collecting what he’d been arranging for himself on the desktop.

Saul was still in the hall, not in the room with her, and he didn’t have a mind to introduce himself. He’d be better off tailing her out, since he clearly wasn’t following the houseboat anyplace anymore, and to do that he had to give her time to get her things in order. From where he was he could just see around the doorjamb, to the dead body of the man and the back of the woman as she looked through the papers. He had a space behind him he could slip into when she came out, if she came out that way. He wasn’t sure how many doors the office had. There was one barely in his field of vision that was either a closet or a second office.

It took her three minutes to find what she was looking for. It took Archie Goodwin three minutes and ten seconds to open the second office door, and say, “Excuse me, but do you do house calls? I might have a few addresses for you, if you’d oblige me.”

There were all kinds of acts. There were ugly women with hard eyes and soft hearts and pretty women with sweet voices and guns in the their purses, and there were tall, good-looking men in department-store ties with white teeth and just enough casual deportment to look like they’d never think of taking a gun out of a woman’s hand against her will. Archie spent about ten more seconds to relieve her of her pistol.

“The hell with you,” she snapped, not sweet anymore.

“The point has been raised,” Archie said glibly, “but I think you’ll find I have a surprising tendency toward moral rectitude in times of adversity.”

She didn’t look like she had time for rectitude, moral or not. Saul saw her hand land on the desk, searching, before she did it. He could have yelled out, he supposed, but Archie was pontificating and Saul had not been tasked with keeping him in an audience for his chatter: the day Wolfe asked him to do that, Saul would hang up his hat and go back to Brooklyn for good, because the world would have gone crazy.

The desk telephone made a nice sort of ringing sound when it connected with Archie’s face, solid and slightly cheerful, like the doorbell at a high-class butcher’s.

Archie did not go down like a load of bricks. He didn’t go down at all, in fact; he caught the edge of the desk with a yell and spat blood as he righted himself, but by the time he was vertical, she was leaving, and that meant Saul had places to be. He took a discreet step into the shadows as she passed, not too fast to catch her eye but just slow enough to catch Archie’s, and Archie goggled at him like a prizefighter who’d just gotten flattened and then told the fight was rigged.

 

* * *

 

It was a long trip back to Midtown from Connecticut. Saul went around to West Thirty-Fifth to solicit further, as was the custom after a job. He was going to be left out on the stoop a lot longer than ten minutes for his behavior this afternoon, but Wolfe would want to know what happened anyway.

As it turned out, he didn’t get left in cold longer than a minute, because Wolfe had got himself a new answering service.

“Mr. Panzer,” Fritz said, nearly the epitome of civility but for the edge of his mouth, which thought it might be smiling. “They await you in the office.”

“Do they?” Saul asked. It was warm inside, after the chill of the street. “With bated breath, no doubt. And what’s for dinner tonight, Fritz?”

“A nice soup, not too thick,” Fritz said, doing away with what was left of his manners, “and easy on a sore mouth.” Saul laughed.

“Like that, is it?” he said. “You can keep my bowl in the kitchen.”

“Of course,” Fritz agreed, and disappeared to his duties.

 

* * *

 

It was an easy interview, if spoiled by an atmosphere that ranged from lukewarm, which was Wolfe’s general temperature in the face of unplanned changes to his culinary routine, to positively arctic, which was Archie’s general temperature in the face of monumental cosmic unfairness and unexpected physical violence.

Saul had seen it before, if not directed at him. Archie was particular about people hitting him, about people thinking about hitting him, about missing his chance to hit other people, and also about his face.

“Saul,” Wolfe said, somewhat peevishly. “Thank you for joining us. I hope you will understand if we move directly to the discussion of particulars for which you have come; I have no taste for small talk tonight.”

Archie was in his chair with his notebook. He spared a moment out of his secretarial diligence to send Saul a blood-thirsty look, then went back to writing.

It was a pretty spectacular look. Archie might not have met the floorboards personally this afternoon, but he’d lost his end of the fight by mile. He had a cut on his temple stuck together with plaster, a boxer’s black eye, and a split clear through the pink of his lower lip, and he looked like he’d heard frowning was the next best thing to vanishing cream.

“Yes, sir,” Saul said to Wolfe, sitting down. “After the lady absconded with the papers —” 

Archie coughed, not delicately. Saul carried on. 

“After that, she went downtown, to the north-east corner of the intersection of Hudson and Morton, and hired herself a car.”

“You can give the details of the make and model of the vehicle to Archie later,” Wolfe told him, which earned them another coarse noise. “I assume you continued after her.”

“Of course,” Saul said. “To make a long story short, we went upstate, and then a little over to the right, the exact route of which I’m happy to communicate to Mr. Goodwin in writing so as not to interrupt your evening further,” he offered. Archie gave him a glare so ugly Saul was surprised it didn’t turn both his eyes black for good.

“Ignore him,” Wolfe said. “He’s upset about something or other. Go on.”

It went like that for a while, with Wolfe asking what questions he deemed pertinent, and Archie making up for all that pertinence with a little impertinence of his own design. He spread it out enough that Wolfe didn’t kick him out altogether.

“Well,” Wolfe said finally, “if that is all, I think we may adjourn here, and move on to better repasts.”

He said the last with not less than a pound of bitterness, which, while not much by ratio to his bulk, was plenty enough that Saul knew better than to ask what they had had planned for dinner before Archie’s slow eye for women with telephone receivers had ruined their menu.

 

* * *

 

Fritz had kept him a little soup in the kitchen, set out on the table beside half a loaf of bread, a quarter of a chicken with chestnut sauce, and a raspberry tart.

“Big plans, were they?” Saul asked. Fritz put his glass down with a little extra oomph, thunking it disconsolately on the table.

“Come on, now,” Saul told him. “I didn’t hit him with that telephone, so don’t take your scorned supper out on me.”

Fritz stopped on his way to the refrigerator and turned back to lean on the chair beside Saul’s.

“Is that what happened?” he said.

“Did he not tell you?” Saul tore off a piece of chicken. “I thought Wolfe was just being witty in there. Some Connecticut broad hit him in the face with a piece of desk equipment, though not hard enough to ruin any of his bone structure.”

“Heaven forbid such thing,” Fritz said, with considerable forbearance.

“Heaven would never let that happen to a face like Archie Goodwin’s,” Saul said. “Now sit down, Fritz, and pretend you’re happy to see me.”

 

* * *

 

Archie stopped by the kitchen on his way to bed, while Saul and Fritz were still drinking port and making their way through a game of checkers.

Fritz set his glass aside and stood. “Milk, Archie?”

“Yes,” Archie said, about as cheery as he was in the office, but quieter, because it was nighttime. He was behind Saul, which meant that if Saul wanted to look him in the eye he had to turn halfway around in his chair. Saul was just considering the pros and cons when Archie said, “Some fellow you are,” loud enough to carry.

“Fritz, don’t listen to him,” Saul said. “As for you,” he turned and gave Archie his full attention. “You know perfectly well why I didn’t jump on her.”

“You didn’t have to sit on her for me,” Archie sulked. “You could have put up a warning of some sort.”

“With what? I’ve forgotten all my bird-calls.”

Archie scowled at him. It was a sight: his left temple was grape-red and looked like it knew what hurting was about, and he wasn’t mumbling only because he had so much lip to start with.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Saul said. “You’ll get over it. Still got all your teeth?”

Archie smiled at him, ear to ear, then winced. Saul nodded.

“That’s enough of that, now,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Fritz came back with Archie’s milk. He was taking his sweet time. He set it down on the table, and Archie picked it up without sitting.

“Some kind of sympathy,” he muttered, sounding like he might even have meant it.

“If I’m ever about to get walloped with a stapler, I’ll call you first,” Saul said. “You can watch.” Archie shook his head and left.

Fritz waited until he was gone and sat back down. He was three jumps from a king and two-to-one odds to win this round, and Saul didn’t think a little sour milk was going to spoil that.

 

* * *

 

Saul went back the next day to deliver his typed report of the events. Wolfe would want it on principle, and Saul didn’t feel like spinning the whole yarn to Archie again but with longitudes and latitudes; he didn’t know how far north they’d get before Archie would get too surly for a conversation. He might as well do it himself.

It was half past nine and Wolfe was upstairs, as was his wont. Fritz let Saul in and Saul let himself into the office to leave the report on Wolfe’s desk for later.

“Fritz,” Saul said on his way out, via a chair in the kitchen a plate full of cookies, “will you remind Wolfe it’s there, when you see him for lunch? I haven’t run into Archie or I’d tell him, but Wolfe will want it eventually.”

“Of course,” Fritz assured him. He was buzzing around like a honeybee doing something with cod, and Saul was sitting at the far end of the table so it didn’t ruin his ginger snaps.

 

* * *

 

As it happened, he was halfway through his second to last snap and pondering the value of stopping at home for lunch when Archie made himself known. He announced himself with a lot of footsteps and a noise at the door, which was not the formal etiquette for someone of his social standing but would do for the morning.

“Hello, Archie,” Fritz said. “Can I get you anything?”

“No,” Archie said sullenly. He planted himself on the chair across from Saul so solidly Saul thought he might spring roots.

“Ginger snap?” Saul asked, holding up the last cookie. 

“The hell with you,” Archie told him politely. “Fritz, I’ll have a glass of milk.”

Fritz brought him a glass and a plate of his own, complete with a stack of cookies that would have taken Archie ten minutes to eat in a normal state and about two years in his current one.

Saul swallowed his last bite and looked over at Archie. “Are you still sore at me about the telephone, or is something really wrong?”

Archie heaved an operatic sigh and stretched his legs out to prop up his feet under the table and onto the chair next to Saul. He picked up a cookie and broke off a sliver. His knees were an inch from Saul’s, but his feet were on the side of Saul opposite to the door.

It was the little things, Saul ruminated, that meant you knew someone really cared.

“I could still be mad at you, easy,” Archie said after nibbling on his piece of snap. “I’ve had to cancel my whole social calendar on account of disfigurement.”

“I’m sure you can still find someone to kiss it better. The investigation’s going all right?”

“Hell if I know,” Archie said sourly. “Either he’s got nothing and he’s holding out because he doesn’t like to seem dumb, or he’s got something huge and he won’t let on out of plain spite.”

“What’s he got to be spiteful about?”

“What hasn’t he? I may have made a few remarks about his decision to send a man like me out after a woman like that with nothing but a dormouse backing him up, is all.”

“You had plenty of backup,” Saul said. “I wouldn’t have let her shoot you.”

“Thanks,” Archie said dryly, applying himself to another sliver of cookie.

“Anyway, you should know better,” Saul said as he stood. “Mouthing off to Wolfe. That’s no more than anyone would get, giving him lip like that.”

Archie looked up on a rueful smile. The right side of his face was doing all the work, which was good because the left didn’t look like it was up for carrying the burden. His left eye had joined in the fun, though, and he looked amused, a little sardonic, and very nearly civil, which was to say he looked like his usual self.

“Clocked in the face and exiled to the kitchen,” he said, resigned. “It’s all I deserve.”

“It’s a hell of a way to go,” Saul said sympathetically. He took a couple of ginger snaps off Archie’s plate for the road and saw himself out.

 

* * *

 

Saul occupied himself as he normally did until the next visit to the brownstone, which was with a judicious selection of small cases and a lot of patience with fools. He didn’t mind working with all kinds of joints and he didn’t mind a break from Wolfe’s methods, but he was a regular with the denizens of West Thirty-Fifth for a reason: because, certain individuals excepted at certain times of the day, they weren’t idiots.

Certain individuals had his telephone number, and Saul answered his phone on Friday evening to a summons. 

“I’m surprised you didn’t make Theodore make the call,” Saul said. “I thought you’d be afraid it might bite you again.”

“Very funny,” Archie said. “Wolfe wants to know, are you otherwise engaged this weekend, or not?”

Archie had worked on his telephone voice ever since somebody must’ve told him when he was young that his smile didn’t do the job over the line. He had perfected it to a pleasant baritone that could sell ice to Eskimos, but it didn’t mean Saul was buying. He had heard it too many times before.

“For how long? I have a gig on Monday that wouldn’t like it if I moved it.”

“It’s a weekend deal only,” Archie said. “Nothing more than three hours a day, maybe four on Sunday. Expenses and all, and free champagne.”

The free champagne was more suspicious than the expenses, but Saul didn’t have a good reason to keep stringing him along, so he agreed. It took a little while to get there on account of some other things he had to do, and Wolfe was ensconced in the office with Archie by the time Fritz showed him in.

Archie’s bruises weren’t much better, but his expression had cleared up considerably since Saul had last had the pleasure of being transcribed. Archie nodded a hello, and Saul found himself a seat.

“Saul,” Wolfe sighed. “Loath as I am to resort this level of — _tomfoolery_ , this simplicity of deceit and low-dealing, via a man I have some respect for —”

“He just doesn’t know how to say it,” Archie cut in. Wolfe made an expression of extreme distaste. “The telephone blonde’s sister lives up in Hartford and she’s having a party on Sunday. It’d be a swell time to get at the will that they’ve stashed up there, but Wolfe’s lost his invitation and you can see I’m at a disadvantage. With a new suit, you could do the trick for a night, and you already know what to look out for.”

He smiled, less painful than all the times before put together, and Saul let himself think about it.

“What’s the trouble, then? Why can’t you just sneak up and get it yourself without scaring anyone?”

“She keeps the key on her person at all times,” Archie replied. “Now, I’ve seen pictures, and I wouldn’t mind relieving her person of it, but I don’t think I’ve got the raw charisma lately.”

“Indeed,” Wolfe said stiffly. “So you can see, we are in a quandary. Archie I normally have no qualms about sending for such low-class work, but I am at a loss for who else to ask to fill his shoes.”

“He’s not at a loss,” Archie said. “He only likes to seem desperate, so you won’t refuse him.” Wolfe made his customary face of scornful indignation at that.

“Why didn’t you call Orrie?” Saul asked. “Well, no, let me get to the point: I won’t do it. But I will help you find someone suitable, if you need it.”

Archie dropped his ankle off his knee and sat up straight at that. Even Wolfe frowned, a wrinkle to add to the dozen folds of his fat face.

“Orrie is unfortunately out of the state at the moment. I agree it would be more to his liking, but despite Archie’s insistence on being glib, we are in fact without further options,” Wolfe said. He took a breath and let it out, like a volcano thinking about blowing its top. “I assure you, Saul, I am aware that this sort of maneuver is not to your normal taste, but I have no doubts as to your capacity. We will provide all expenses and what attire is necessary; it will be half a day’s work, in, as Archie has indelicately pointed out, the company of a woman some men might describe as passably attractive.”

Archie snorted. “Passably attractive,” he said. “I can promise you better than that. Wolfe has no taste.”

“I’m sorry,” Saul said, standing. “But I have to say no, thank you. I can get you a list of names if you want to go looking for a replacement, but I think you know most of them already.”

Wolfe looked surprised at that. “I confess I was not expecting your resistance, despite the objectionable circumstances. As Archie so crassly alluded, it is generous pay for an evening in fine clothes romancing a beautiful woman: not to my liking, perhaps, but I am asking you, as a colleague of some longstanding acquaintance, to at least consider it.”

It was Archie who was frowning now, and not gently. Wolfe looked more frustrated than angry, but he didn’t look like he would take no for an answer, either.

That was the trouble with working for Wolfe: if you liked to have any secrets, you had better enjoy them fast, because they never lasted long. Saul was half surprised Wolfe hadn’t figured it on his own, and more than a little annoyed, because if he had, he wouldn’t have asked.

“As you say, different things are to different people’s liking,” Saul said to Wolfe.

"Oh?" Wolfe replied.

Saul’s tongue felt like lead, but he flogged it into action. 

“It’s not the new clothes or the champagne that I never got a taste for,” he said, ignoring Archie, “and I think we’ll leave it at that.”

It was always impossible to tell if Wolfe was really stunned or just irked that he hadn’t ferreted it out sooner himself. Saul didn’t wait around to find out which one it was; he picked up his feet and found the door on his own.

 

* * *

 

The kitchen was on the way out, and Saul put his head in on a whim. He wasn’t guaranteed any kind of repeat business after tonight’s performance, and if he was going to miss out on the remaining balance of his lifetime’s supply of five-star dinners from a fellow reprobate, he ought to at least say goodbye.

It was empty. Fritz was absent, for once in his life, and a fine time for it. Saul found a piece of paper and was just wrestling a pencil into submission when Archie’s feet announced him at the door.

“Checking your recipes?” he asked, not friendly.

“Haven’t been using enough baking soda, I guess,” Saul said. He set the pencil down. 

Archie had enough leg and shoulder to take up the majority of a doorframe if he put his mind to it, and at least half if he simply wasn’t paying attention; Saul couldn’t say which it was, this time. Either way, Archie didn’t seem inclined to move. In fact, he seemed inclined to wait there indefinitely, but for what, Saul had no idea. Saul wasn’t going to start up the oven himself.

He didn’t think much of standing here until Archie figured out what he was waiting on. At this rate, it might take all night.

“Well,” Saul said eventually. “I can see the doorjamb’s talking to you, but there’s a comfortable chair just back there in the office if you need a rest.”

Archie gave him a look so opaque you could paint the wall with it, but he straightened up and moved himself to the side so that there was a good three-fifths of the way clear. It would have to be enough.

Saul inched a little to the side as he passed, and it was like a party trick: whatever Archie had been storing up boiled out of him like steam out of a teakettle. He made a noise like a door slamming and uncrossed his arms, all at once.

Saul took a quick step back, out into the hallway. He didn’t like to think Archie would raise more than his voice, but he hadn’t gotten to his daily rate by making assumptions about people’s characters in the absence of clear evidence, and he didn’t have much in the way of clear evidence here.

Archie made a bitter face and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Really?” he asked, dripping with it. “You think I’d take a poke at you over this? After how long we’ve known each other?”

“Long,” Saul said, “isn’t well.”

Archie looked like he would have liked to hit him for that, but he didn’t. He want back to his mime act, mouth shut and eyes blazing. He did his best impression of a Laborador and followed Saul into the foyer, two feet behind, as Saul collected his hat and coat and went to the door. 

“I’m going out, and nowhere interesting,” Saul said, opening it. “If you’re of a mind to trail along on the walk home, I know a few officers who wouldn’t mind picking you up for harassment.”

Archie didn’t laugh. “ _Harassment?_ What the hell’s gotten into you?”

They were letting the late autumn bugs in, but Archie didn’t seem to be worried about it, and if he wasn’t moved, Saul wasn’t either. Anyway, if Fritz had to go chasing mosquitos in the middle of the night he could take it as his parting gift.

“Nothing’s gotten into me that wasn’t there yesterday,” Saul told him, “but it’s not my opinion that’s liable to change over a thing like this.”

“Any opinion that may be held about you in this household,” Archie said tersely, “is not apt to alter under any circumstances, much less the present. If that’s not clear enough, let me say it a different way: I don’t care.”

Archie was not the sort of person to let being angry get in the way of a polite smile and a foolish joke, even with people he disdained. If Saul had had to put his money forward as to which of the members of West Thirty-Fifth was least likely to muster up any real and legitimate fury at the current topic of non-conversation, he would have bet on Goodwin. He would have lost.

Saul hadn’t been holding anything in, but he had a little more air in his lungs now than three seconds ago.

“Well,” Saul said.

“Yes, well.”

“Every man has his limits, Goodwin,” Saul said apologetically, buttoning his jacket. There was no telling what a man carried around in his private thoughts. He was a fine example of that, himself.

“ _Goodwin_ , hell,” Archie snapped. “I’d spit if Wolfe wouldn’t make me clean it up. Limits! You couldn’t run up against any of Wolfe’s limits unless you struggled at it, and even then I don’t think you could make yourself stoop that low, not the man you are. As for me, you’ve got a good ways to go, unless you plan to keep calling me ‘Mister Goodwin’ any time soon.”

Saul smiled at that, and Archie let him have one back. 

“I’d been thinking about it,” Saul said, “but I suppose it can wait until next time.”

“Yeah, see about that,” Archie replied, stepping up to take over the door-holding duties. Saul moved to the stoop and put his hat on. It was thinking about raining, but only thinking. By the time it got around to making a decision, it might be snow.

“Good night, Archie.”

“Good night, Saul.”

 

* * *

 

Saul lived only a hop and a skip away from West Thirty-Fifth, not even a jump. It wasn’t intentional, but it was the way this city worked. Everybody lived a mile apart and never saw each other except over the telephone.

Saturday was a little bit of bookkeeping for a widow who thought her late husband might have squandered some of their hard-earned fortune on a nice pair of shoes and the nicer pair of legs that went in them. He had. Sunday morning was shaping up to be as advertised in the Bible, and then the telephone rang.

“Good morning,” Saul said.

“Hello,” Archie said. “Listen, I know you have your objections, but Wolfe wants to talk to you, and he won’t take no for an answer. I’ve tried everything, from winding him up to presenting practical solutions of every kind, but he won’t have it. He’s determined to have me killed before he gives up on this case, and he's determined to have to you watch.”

“Killed?”

“Oh, there’s more than one telephone in Connecticut,” Archie said cryptically, “figuratively speaking. Anyways, if you’d like to come to my funeral, please bring only white roses and calla lilies, and an extra handkerchief for my mother. If not, Fritz is making breakfast as we speak, and he always sets a plate aside in case of company.”

“I suppose I could be bothered,” Saul conceded, “for the sake of breakfast.”

“Thanks very much,” Archie said. “You’re a gem. Bring a handkerchief in case, and I’ll send out for the flowers if I have to.”

 

* * *

 

Saul left the handkerchief at home and brought the section of the paper he’d been working on, in case Wolfe was otherwise occupied. Wolfe had the tendency to find other diversions during his less-important appointment times, especially on the weekend.

Archie opened the door looking like he’d gotten into a bullfight and lost. Along with the telephone dent, which was ripening to an impressive yellow, he had a new shiner on his right jaw, as though someone had decided he needed a pat on the cheek and patted a little too hard. Saul opened his mouth without thinking.

“Are you doing this for your own entertainment, or did someone give you the impression it looks good on you? The purple doesn’t go with your eyes,” Saul said.

He could have bitten his own tongue off. It was nothing he hadn’t said a thousand times before, but then nothing he’d said a thousand times before sounded the same, after his last night here. Cracks about a fellow man’s appearance were all well and good until someone thought you might really be paying attention.

“Something like that,” Archie muttered, not so much as blinking. Saul followed him inside.

He steered Saul toward the office without so much as a cordial hello for breakfast, but he was so surly that Saul let him. He looked as cheerful as a wet cat, and about as pleasant. 

“You’re not going to have much face left under there, by the end of this,” Saul said.

“Connecticut is not as welcoming as the ad agencies like to say,” Archie replied. “I did find someone willing to kiss the other side better, but, unfortunately, she also helped me out at acquiring a matching sample.”

The office was empty, and Saul went to the red leather chair and sat down. “She seems to have been lacking in technique,” he said, eyeing the ugly splash of chartreuse loitering under Archie’s left eye.

It was fading as fast as could be expected, but the blonde had had, if not much in the way of moral fiber, at least an arm on her.

“Well, she tried,” Archie said. “I hate to dock a lady the points if she’s put in an effort.” He leaned against the front of the desk and put his hands in his pockets.

“Is he in the plant rooms? You can phone up; I’ll wait.”

“He may well be,” Archie said. Saul frowned at him. “I’ll call him in a minute. He may not know you’re here.” He had the class to put on a chagrined face, but not enough to look like he meant it. 

“Thanks for that,” Saul said. “See if I bring roses now. What do you want, if it’s not him asking?”

“Look,” Archie said. “I recognize your objections as stated, but I’m having some firm objections of my own to getting socked in the face and rolled down a hill every time I turn around. It’s one night, a key and a piece of paper and then we’re done, or it’s three more weeks of this, if I’m lucky.”

“You’re asking me to go.”

“I’ve never known you to have trouble with a lie,” Archie said. 

Saul shook his head. “That’s a little different.”

“Only a little,” Archie said. “It’s a lie with dress shoes on, but I’m not asking you to enjoy it. I’m just asking you to endure.”

“There’s other detectives in this town, much as Wolfe hates to admit it.”

“Oh, sure,” Archie said, “and Wolfe could hire a dozen other fellows, and maybe if we put them all in the same slacks and sent them up together they might add up to one of you, but as we haven’t got the time or the fabric, I’m asking you first.”

Saul regarded him for a moment. He looked pretty bad, no question about it, and they clearly weren’t having much luck on any other front, or Archie wouldn’t be the one with bruises.

He had a point. It would be easy. It always would have been easy, at any time, but it was the principle of the thing.

“If it was the other way around, and I asked you to endure, would you?” Saul said.

Archie furrowed his brow. He was a quick thinker, normally. Everyone who worked for Wolfe was, if only because nobody liked having the rug yanked out from under their feet for fun. Saul himself could out-think most men if they were walking at a decent pace. He didn’t fancy himself the sharpest man in Manhattan, but if he was the second or the third, he’d accept it.

Archie was a quick thinker, but when he decided to take his time, it was a whole different picture. Saul let him have a moment.

“At this point,” Archie said finally, “I would.” He shrugged. “It’s been a hell of a week. If I’ve still got all my teeth, it’s only because the one in the back left hasn’t made up its mind to pack its bags yet. It could still go at any time. I’m not looking to make it out of this life as handsome as I came into it, but I’d like to be able to eat in Fritz’s kitchen at the ripe old age of forty, and the way it’s going, I’ll be down to soft mush and milk.”

He looked pathetic. He never looked pathetic at Saul on purpose; he saved that for young women and old cops. Still, he looked it now.

“All right,” Saul said. “Call up to the plant rooms, and get me a train ticket.”

“Thank you,” Archie said.

“You’re welcome,” Saul told him, standing. “If Fritz hasn’t really made breakfast, though, I’m taking it all back.”

 

* * *

 

Fritz had scraped up a few scrambled eggs, along with pancakes, scones with butter, fig compote, bacon, ham, three kinds of toast, coffee, and hot chocolate, which was a peculiarity of his on Sundays once he decided it had gotten to be officially autumn.

“Thanks,” Saul said when Fritz changed out the coffee for the chocolate. “This going to be better than the dinner tonight by half.”

Fritz looked pleased and a little pink to hear that, just like he always did. Archie came in with Saul’s train ticket and broke up the party, and Saul rousted himself home to shave and pull something out of the back of his closet.

Wolfe had offered a trip to a department store, after allowing Archie to proudly reveal Saul’s change of heart and then moving on without so much as a scant congratulations. Archie had looked crestfallen, but only for a moment. 

Saul had declined the morning at Macy’s. He had clothes of both kinds; it was only because professional detective work and debauched revelry lacked in sartorial overlap that he hadn’t come around in them sooner.

“Very good,” Wolfe had said at that pronouncement, not even giving Archie time for his turn at repartée, and then Archie really had looked crushed.

 

* * *

 

The party was on a sprawling sixteen-acre estate outside of Hartford that hadn’t gotten the memo that it was nearly winter. It was all covered over in tea-lights and flowers; there were enough roses for ten of Archie’s funerals, and everyone was too busy being looked at to look at Saul too hard. It was just the way he liked it, only with more champagne and a worse selection of music. He managed to work the baby grand into the evening once he’d gotten his name on the blonde’s sister’s dance card, but it wasn’t tuned quite right and it squawked like a parrot at any attempt at Tchaikovsky. He gave it a solid three stars, two and half for quality and an extra half star for putting up with the company with him.

The less said about the company, the better. The blonde’s sister was at least amenable to the approach, if not any help on the landing. It wasn’t for lack of effort on her part; she only wasn’t used to having to make any.

She had lot of well-developed assets, but he wasn't invested in that particular market and so the interest was lost on him. She had no head for conversation and no ear for music, and she was best when speaking to large groups of people who had even larger amounts of money.

It was that kind of party, where everyone was busy working hard at letting their money make more money, even if it took stalling the execution of an old man’s will indefinitely to collect on the dividends. 

She could be convinced, of course. Near the end of the evening, she suggested a tour of the house. He agreed and suggested an added stop in the study, at which point their purposes diverged.

She had a little of her sister in her, which was to say, she had a pistol in her desk. She was missing her sister’s practical streak, however, and after it misfired she thought she’d try out going wild as a savannah antelope. He got it from her with not more than a scratch to his temple, and the key, too, and then he sat her down and started again.

The will was in the drawer, as promised. The noise she made when he got it out was enough, but the sums had impressive plumage of their own. He could see how a month or two of the dust off that road might be worth a crime, although cold-blooded murder still seemed a little overdone.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, tucking it into his pocket. “I’ll give you a choice, and then we’ll do what you like.”

“I won’t like any of it,” she said viciously. “You’re a cad. I won’t listen.”

“You’ll want to. I have in my possession one pistol, presumed to be yours —”

“Hah!”

“— and one will and testament, well known not to be. Now, this gun, as you have pointed out, is not yours by original purchase. Your sister, currently a free woman, is likely familiar with its other exploits. As are you. As am I. That understanding is kept expressly to the three of us, and one other gumshoe who is too ugly to testify right now. I personally do not enjoy the bright light of the witness stand, and my friends at the police force respect this, which leaves the burden of the testimony to yourself, your sister, the fear of perjury, and the bonds of sisterly love.”

She didn’t cower, which was to her credit. She whimpered a little, but she sat up straight.

“That’s not your choice. That’s just true, and nothing you can do about it. You choice is, do I call the police now, and tell them I was assaulted by the very pistol used to murder a man last week in Midtown Manhattan, in your hand? Or do I take you all the way back to New York to meet a friend of mine who’ll at least listen when you sit down in his office?”

“What friend?” she asked, with only a little quaver. She had nothing to go on and she knew it, but there was no harm in her asking, nor in his answering. She might feel better about it, although only if she wasn’t acquainted with Wolfe in any form.

“His name is Nero Wolfe, and he is not more merciful than the NYPD, but he is more attentive,” Saul said. “Now, I have two return tickets to Grand Central, a properly loaded pistol of my own, and easily half a foot of reach on you, so I think if you’re agreeable, we can go at your convenience, and ride back in style.”

She was agreeable.

 

* * *

 

It was past two o’clock in the morning when they arrived at the brownstone. The sister had refused to break down and cry, and instead insisted on making the journey in a state of some composure. She made it all the way to the office before she saw Inspector Cramer, and then all her composure composted to nothing and she was on the verge of melting down to mulch and watering the houseplants.

“You said there wouldn’t be any cops,” she said quietly, turning to face him. He put his hand on her shoulder and walked her to the chair Archie had set out.

“There was always going to be cops sometime,” he said, not cruelly. “Just sit down and tell them, and they’ll see what it comes up to. If one of you’s the fool, it’s not your sister, so you might have a chance.”

Her makeup was all ruined already, and Saul waved to Archie for a handkerchief. He might have brought one after all, funeral or no funeral, but he hadn’t thought it out and all his spares were at home.

Archie provided while Wolfe tapped his fingers on his desk in a show of dramatic impatience. To stall him, Saul got out the will and the pistol and laid them on the side of the desk in front of Cramer.

“That’s the murder weapon, and then the document itself, of course,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive my fingerprints; she was trying it out for fun and I had to help her aim.”

Cramer looked him up and down. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with that beauty mark you’ve got there, would it? It seems to be going around.”

“No,” Saul told him. “That’s just a bee-sting. No need to add attempted murder to the list.”

She really did start crying then, so hard Archie looked a little flummoxed at the flood. Saul leaned down to take her hand, the one that wasn’t clinging to the balled-up handkerchief like it might provide her with an airtight alibi. Between the two of them, she was shielded from Wolfe and Cramer. If she was ever hoping to get her spine straight, it was going to be now, without their eyes on her like lions waiting for their chance.

“Buck up, sweetheart,” he said. Archie jerked at that and twisted to look at him. “They’re only a couple of ugly old jackals, and this scarecrow here. I’ve seen you take on as many as fifteen investment bankers at once in sporting conversation. You can tell them all about it without cracking up.”

She sniffled valiantly, but the faucet was off. He let her hang on while she put her face back together a little with the handkerchief.

She swallowed, and smiled up at him. “You’re still a cad,” she told him in a level voice. “I can’t believe you.”

“I know,” he told her, kissing her cheek. Next to him, Archie was doing his best impression of a fish; it was a pretty good one. “No one ever can. If you’ll excuse me.”

He let her go and left. He didn’t have the compulsive need to embellish while someone else was talking, so he could leave Wolfe and Archie to their entertainments and get some real dinner.

 

* * *

 

Fritz had kept a plate of fish warm for him. Saul took off his jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves and applied himself to the first enjoyable act of the night.

“I’m not a religious man, but I don’t think it’s blasphemy to thank God for you,” Saul told him, after he’d made a good effort.

“It wasn’t much of an evening?” Fritz asked. He had put the rest of the kitchen to bed, and it was only them and a few empty plates. Fritz was still on duty, but he had a way of sliding toward relaxation when no one was looking, and he had slid so far as a chair across from Saul and a glass of port.

“She was boring from the start, and then I made her cry,” Saul said. “And the piano was out of tune.” Fritz smiled.

“Torture,” he said, deep with sympathy, and Saul laughed.

“I am allowed to complain.”  

“Not on these premises,” Archie said wearily from the doorway. “We’ve got a moratorium on lamentation after that circus; there’s no more room for woe. You’ll have to take it on the chin and soldier on in brave silence. Have you got any more of that lying around, Fritz?”

Fritz had gotten up when Archie came in, and he went to the refrigerator to put something together. Archie took the next chair over, and leaned down onto his elbows and sighed.

“Well,” he said.

“No lamentations,” Saul reminded him. “Is everything settled?”

“Hardly. Cramer’s just taking her up to the station, and then he’s threatened to come back at eight to take statements. He sounds like he means to go through with it.”

“Hell,” Saul said. “Well, that’s my Monday gig tied up in knots. I’ll call them in the light of day.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right. There was no way for you to know there might be a crime involved.”

Archie put his black eye to work and showed Saul just what he thought of that level of wit. Saul wiped his hands on the napkin and set it aside.

“I had Fritz make up the guest room,” Archie said. “You’ve got four or five hours at most until the NYPD invade the place; that should be time for a nap and a quick breakfast.” His eyes flicked over Saul’s face and got stuck on the the nick in the paint.

“Don’t worry,” Saul said. “It was only the back end of a pistol. If she’d reached for the paperweight I’d have stopped her so we could call you first, to watch.” Archie glanced down as Fritz put a plate in front of him. 

“Can I get you ice for that, Saul?” Fritz asked. Saul finished his port, found his jacket, and stood up.

“No, it won’t even bruise. Archie will have to keep bearing the house colors for the time being.”

Archie looked a little offended at that, but he got to his feet instead of arguing. “Save that for me, Fritz,” he said absently. Fritz nodded politely, as if that weren’t the greatest affront to culinary dignity since poverty in Africa, and Archie followed Saul out into the hallway.

The guest room was up a flight of stairs and two doors down. Saul had spent a dozen nights in it, at least. There was no telling when Wolfe would want you and there was no telling when he’d let you go, either. It was best to take your rest where you could find it. He was used to it.

He wasn’t used to the armed guard. Archie trailed him halfway to the foot of the stairs and then Saul gave in to curiosity and said, “What?”

“Oh. Nothing,” Archie said. “Well, not nothing. Only, I really didn’t mean for this to become a full-time job, with benefits. We were thinking you’d just come back with the paper, not the whole doll.”

“She brought herself. It wasn’t any trouble.” Saul shrugged. “As for the benefits, as you said, we’ve got to spread them around or you’d end up uglier than Wolfe. She was a bad shot and a soft touch, and while I don’t like making women cry, at least I could make her stop just as easy.”

Archie pursed his lips. He looked a little like Wolfe like that, only taller, thinner, sweeter, and blond, none of which were a feat. The dents the telephone sister had knuckled into him were all but smoothed out, and the two sides of his face matched again in contour, if not in color. In two weeks he’d be back in the business of making women cry all on his own.

“Really, Archie,” Saul said. “It was a trial like Prometheus, but there’s no complaints in this house anymore, so I’ll just say it was duller than my usual dates and leave it at that.”

Archie stopped pursing his lips to bite the lower one, then let it go. His bruises really were getting better if he could stand the enamel, but it was a shock to see the dent in his split lip nonetheless. 

When Archie had something he had to say, it was almost never a secret. Saul could pick out one of his real rambles from a forced monologue in under half a minute, and he thought Wolfe could tell by word number two, but either way Archie was always talking.

Saul had seen Archie hold his tongue on pain of death or starvation, but he hadn’t seen him willingly swallow a whole mouthful of words like this in years. Saul gave him a moment, and then another, but nothing came out.

It was dark in the hallway, with only the light from the kitchen and upstairs spilling down, and Archie had gone back to searching for the meaning of life on Saul’s brow. As Saul watched, his mouth opened a little and he straightened up.

The hallway got another couple of degrees darker, just from the change in the color of his eyes.

It might gotten a couple of degrees warmer, too: Saul wasn’t carrying his thermometer. Archie didn’t look concerned, exactly, but nor did he look pleased. He looked like he wanted to do something about the smudge on Saul’s brow, and he looked like he was getting pretty close to figuring out just what that was.

It was a new look on him. There had been a lot of new looks on Archie in the past week, but this was the newest, and it was a hell of a look. Saul could’ve told him what to do about it two hours ago, but only as a joke.

He wouldn’t bet his life on it, but he didn’t think anyone was trying to be funny now.

No one was cracking wise, but no one was talking either, and if they stayed like this forever it was looking like they’d suffocate. “Don’t break your heart over it,” Saul said softly, so as not to make him jump. “It’ll be gone by morning, and you’ll still be nursing that broken jaw. Good night, Archie.”

Archie's lips closed and then opened again, less like a fish this time and more like a debutante thinking about a glass of champagne.

“Good night,” Archie said, once he’d gotten his mouth under control. His voice had lost its smooth edge. After another second, he nodded and took himself back to the kitchen with no more pep than his usual amble, or not much more, anyway.

Well, Saul thought. There was a new miracle every week.

It was too late for thinking, or rather it was too early. On a good day he was a man of, yes, some curiosity, but more discretion, and most of all he was tired. If anything was certain, it was that Cramer would show up on time with a cigar and schedule. Archie would still be there in the morning, if he wanted to spend any more time practicing his speaking voice.

 

* * *

 

Saul woke at seven fifteen out of habit, got his face in order, and found his shoes. There was a chance he might get a little work done today, and if so, he might as well look the part. The south room where he was stashed was across from Archie’s, but the door was hanging open and Archie wasn’t in. Saul looked at his clock just to be sure he hadn’t forgotten his numbers, but it read seven thirty-one, no lie. He would have thought he might be reading the clock wrong and have slept all day, if it wasn’t only just light outside when he opened the window. As it was, it was morning, and by the evidence accrued it seemed nearly everyone in the house was awake. The world must have gone crazy.

Archie was in the kitchen when Saul joined Fritz for pancakes, propped up against the wall with the paper and an empty plate. Archie was still in his dressing-gown and pajamas, which meant whatever unplanned shake his brain had taken last night while looking at Saul had only been a minor earthquake, not complete Ragnarok.

“Good morning, Fritz,” Saul said. Archie spared him a glance and turned the page.

Saul had learned a few things about every member of the brownstone over the years, and one of them was he could always say when Archie was pretending. He wasn’t going to make any effort to sort out _what_ Archie was pretending until after a cup of coffee, but he wasn’t reading about stocks.

“Good morning, Saul,” Fritz replied. “Mr. Cramer is in the office, but of course you must have breakfast first.”

“Mr. Cramer is in the office? Are the clocks really broken? I thought he meant to join us at eight.”

“I was up a little early, so I phoned him at home, to encourage him,” Archie said from behind the paper. All Saul could see was his hair, which he had had the gumption to comb, at least. Saul coughed in surprise, and Archie tipped a corner down to regard him.

“You were up a little early?” Saul said. Fritz set a plate in front of him, but Saul was on to something; the French toast would stay warm. “Archie, how hard did the telephone sister hit you last week?”

Archie was completely done with breakfast and Cramer both: he was clearly awake enough for riposte, but all he did was blink and shake the paper back into place. If Saul wasn’t so bleary-eyed, he might have thought Archie had turned a shade or two of pink behind all the bruises, but it was early and Saul’s eyes couldn’t be trusted.

He put a great deal more attention toward his food than Archie was throwing at his paper and got done with breakfast by seven forty-five. No one said much of anything, Archie because he was suffering from equine morning encephalopathy and had turned into the kind of man who liked to wake up and hated to talk, and Saul because his mouth was full. 

“Fritz,” Saul said finally, pushing his plate away, “I love you.” Fritz blushed properly, like he always did. Archie put his paper down and finished his coffee in one gulp while Fritz preened. If he’d ever been affected by something like shyness, he wasn’t now.

“Can I take this to go?” Saul asked Fritz, picking up his cup. Archie scowled over at him, a sight in blue pajamas and green bruises. Saul didn’t have the wherewithal to figure out Fritz, Goodwin, and Cramer at the same time, not before nine in the morning.

“Thanks, Fritz,” he said at Fritz’s nod, and saw himself into the office, only two doors away.

 

* * *

 

Cramer was in the red leather chair, chewing on an unlit cigar and looking over a veritable forest’s worth of notes. He looked up when Saul entered, and grunted.

“Morning, Inspector,” Saul said.

“Morning,” Cramer said. “Good of you to join us.”

“My secretary didn’t update my schedule,” Saul told him. “I was laboring under a misapprehension as to the time of this appointment.”

“Your secretary, sure. He’s nobody’s secretary but Wolfe’s, and I don’t know how that fat fool gets anything done with a telephone girl like that.”

“Sheer force of will, Inspector. Shall we get started? Actually, mind if I use the phone?”

Cramer nodded, and Saul went to Archie’s desk and called up to the Bronx to let them know he’d be late, or possibly absent, depending on the urgency of the assignment. They were feeling gracious, or maybe desperate, because they just told him to hurry it up and be there as soon as he was finished at Wolfe’s, and they’d pay him by the hour until it was done. He thanked them and hung up.

“Well, that’s done with. Should we start at the beginning, or have you heard the base of the story?”

Cramer chewed on his cigar for a moment. “I’ve heard it out of Goodwin,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll chase me around a bush if I tell you I suspect there may be a different version of events floating around out there somewhere.”

“Fair enough. I wrote it up for Wolfe, everything before the party,” Saul said. “If I can furnish you that, we can skip a lot of shorthand.”

It wasn’t in Wolfe’s desk, and Saul was just beginning to despair that it had walked off out of Archie’s and into the archives when he finally found it in the third drawer on the left, under a highway map of New Jersey, two gilt-edged tickets to something, and a cut-out newspaper article about a bank.

“There,” Saul said, handing it over and turning Archie’s desk chair around to face Cramer. “Have a look through that, and then I’ll start up where it leaves off, if it’s all the same to you.”

Cramer kept a good straight face until he got about halfway through, and then he snorted and looked up. 

“You didn’t help him?” he asked, chuckling around the cigar. He looked like he’d just found out the name of the guy who did Capone’s taxes.

“If it makes you feel better about my immortal soul, he wouldn’t have lifted a finger if we’d been swapped,” Saul said. “Not with a tail like that waiting, not on a job.”

“Still.” Cramer smiled. “How sore was he? Be honest.”

“He loaded it all in early, so he could get it over with,” Saul said. “He’s fine now, this morning’s debacle notwithstanding.”

“You sure he’s not still in a snit over it? Because I’d love someone to blame for getting woken up before dawn for a stack of interviews on a case that’s all sewed up and then some.” Saul shook his head.

“If someone slipped something into his drink last night, it wasn’t me,” he said. That might be a lie, but if Saul had poisoned Archie’s milk with the kind of ideas that kept a man up nights, he hadn’t entirely meant to, and anyway he wasn’t going into it with Cramer of all people. “Can we move on to the rest of it? I’ve got someplace to be, and I’m sure you had plans for lunch.”

They went through the party and the sister and the piano all in order, nothing left out except an inconsequential fact or two. Cramer looked pleased when they wrapped up, or as pleased as a man who’d been dragged down to the brownstone before eight a.m. for nothing but coffee and stenography could look.

“That’ll do it,” he said, shuffling his papers into order, and Saul stretched his legs out in front of him and rolled his ankles until he could get up the inspiration to move.

Archie came in before lightning could strike, dressed like a professional and holding Saul’s hat and coat.

“Goodwin,” Cramer said on his way out, and Archie tipped the hat in his hand in a very pleasant how-do-you-do.

“Give me that,” Saul said, standing to take it from him. “He’s got my write-up of the scheme from before the party; I assume you’ve made copies. If not, call him again: I’m sure he’ll mail it back.”

Archie looked a little surprised at that, but not very interested. He handed Saul’s coat over and said, “You can take the roadster, if you need to.”

Saul juggled the hat and coat to turn Archie’s chair back around to face the wall. “What, to the Bronx?” 

“If you bring it back without any scratches, maybe I’ll let you put your name on the registration, under Wolfe’s,” Archie offered.

“It’s registered to Wolfe?” Saul blurted, too shocked to be curious about Archie’s sudden generosity. “Why in God’s name did he register a car? Hell, _how_ in God’s name did he register the thing? By mail?”

“More or less.” Archie grinned. “It was a carnival of affairs, let me tell you, but the deeds must show that everything in this brownstone belongs to him, short of that hat in your hand.”

“If I stick around too long, he might sew his name into the brim. When do you need the car back?”

“Any time is fine,” Archie said airily. “Wolfe’s postponed his morning drive, and I don’t need it for anything I can’t take the sedan for instead.” He didn’t look guilty, because Goodwins couldn’t. Absolute innocence it was in their blood. Saul had found that out one Christmas, years ago.

Still, Archie could look about as suspicious as a rat in a henhouse, and he was doing a fine job of it now.

“Archie,” Saul asked, “what the hell are you up to?” and Archie really did turn tomato, then.

“Nothing,” he coughed. 

Archie didn’t do embarrassed well: he always got it mixed up with self-satisfied, just in the tilt of his mouth. Saul hadn’t slipped anything into Archie’s supper, but between the time Saul had got on the train to Connecticut and this morning Saul was beginning to think one of them had drunk the one labelled _Drink Me_. It seemed absurd, but Saul was a man of facts and the facts were that Archie had never been subtle, or especially careful, or immune to a crush.

A new miracle every week. Saul hadn’t been looking at a mirage last night.

“You keep being this solicitous, Archie,” Saul told him thoughtfully, “I’m going to think you want something from me.”

He was a scarce half-foot from Archie in the doorway, but the look in Archie’s eyes was so different from the last time Saul had been edging by him that they may as well have been different people. Saul was close enough to hear the whisper of Archie’s breath over his lips, and when his gaze darted to the knot of Saul’s tie and back up, Saul didn’t need to guess if he was going to get swatted.

Archie brought his lower lip between his teeth again, his eyes more gray than blue in the morning light from the window, and if Saul hadn’t wanted to kiss him in the next fifteen seconds, he might had called him chicken.

As it was, Archie was a little too tall for him to boss around with his hands full, so Saul dropped his coat and hat on the nearest chair and got a hand on the back of Archie’s neck and moved him into a better position.

Archie’s lips were soft as they looked, the half-healed split excepted, but he went stiff as a dead man at the first touch of Saul’s mouth. Saul stopped, his hands suddenly cold. If he was wrong, if he’d charted facts as figures and the other way around, he was —

Archie shivered like a horse shaking off a particularly vicious fly and kissed him back, his hands coming up to barely rest on Saul’s shoulders, and Saul’s heart thought it might hop into action again. In fact, it might have its work cut out for it, because for all that Archie kissed like Saul was a wallflower he’d found in a dance-hall, he had his steps down pat. 

Saul could appreciate that the insult to Archie’s lower lip was healing nicely, if he was inclined to notice that kind of thing. Saul could appreciate the turn of Archie’s chin to make up for the difference in their height; he could appreciate the way Archie’s hands took a careful hold of Saul’s shoulders, if he felt like appreciating the finer points of Archie’s technique.

Archie’s technique was good enough that Saul couldn’t appreciate much more than the warmth of his mouth and the shudder that went through him when Saul pressed a little too hard against the split in his lip.

Archie lungs were working at a pace too fast to hide it when Saul pulled away, and his eyes weren’t stuck on Saul’s tie anymore.

“Saul,” Archie said, breathless. Saul’s blood got a little warmer still. He didn’t think he’d ever caught quite that tone in Archie’s voice before, and he wouldn’t mind hearing it again.

He didn’t have the time to hear it now.

“If you wanted to be this solicitous, you could have picked a better time,” Saul told him reproachfully. Archie’s eyes found their way back from Saul’s mouth to his eyes, and he blushed.

There had been a lot of new looks on Archie in the past week, and this one was almost enough to make Saul phone the Bronx and tell them the whole thing was off. 

Saul’s hand was still on Archie’s arm, and it was easy enough to step back in and coax Archie up against the doorjamb for another kiss; it was harder to stop.

“Now,” Saul said, a little breathless himself, “you may be a professional layabout, but I have a paying job to do,” and it was a testament to Saul’s technique that Archie didn’t say anything for the entire span of time it took Saul to retrieve his hat and coat and see himself out.

 

* * *

 

Saul went to the Bronx in the roadster and did his damnedest to leave Archie in the brownstone where he belonged. The job was reasonably complex, and Saul needed his attention where it was.

The personal accounts of a New York lawyer with too much money, too little restraint, and a secret apartment on Long Island were plenty enough to occupy Saul’s mind on a good day, but today had been a substantially better day than usual, and Saul had an excellent memory, especially for the strawberry tint to Archie’s lips. It had almost matched his cheeks by the time Saul had left.

There had been an element of stunned surprise to Archie’s mouth and eyes and hands that morning, leaving him lagging a fraction of a second behind Saul. Saul couldn’t help but wonder what the difference would be if Archie knew it was coming.

He finished at ten that night and charged for a little under half his regular hourly rate. Anything more would have been simple fraud.

 

* * *

 

Saul’s apartment was built for a family, furnished for one, and a long drive down from the Bronx even without traffic. He left the roadster in the garage and took the keys up with him; if Archie had been spinning yarn about Wolfe and him not needing it back, Saul would hear about it overnight. Otherwise, he had plans to sleep.

His plans made it from inception through a change into pajamas, a cold dinner, and forty ill-advised minutes of thinking more about Archie’s eyes than any useful topic, and then the buzzer went.

“Hello?” Saul said.

“Mr. Panzer,” the doorman said. “There is a lady to see you.”

If he had any opinions about the presence of a lady on Saul’s doorstep at half past eleven on a Monday night, particularly about any effects it might have on her qualifications of ladylike propriety, he kept it to himself.

“All right, Frank,” Saul said. “Did she give her name?”

“She claims to be a Miss Vera Lachlan,” Frank said.

Saul had met a Miss Vera Lachlan once before, on a veranda in Connecticut. She had slapped him in the skull with the butt end of a pistol and then cried at him for good measure.

Her sister’s name was Lea Lachlan and she had her hand in at murder. Saul thought that if he was going to have one of two of them on his doorstep at nearly midnight, he should call them by their names.

He supposed that Vera would do better for his blood pressure. “Thank you, Frank,” Saul said. “Send her on up.”

He found a dressing-gown and put it on, and then in a fit of less sense than impulse, he phoned the brownstone.

It rang three times; Saul was about to call it a bad idea with worse execution when the fourth ring halted halfway through and Archie’s voice came on the line, less charming than offended for the hour.

“Nero Wolfe’s office,” Archie said gruffly. “Archie Goodwin speaking, and not very enthusiastically at —”

“It’s Saul,” Saul interrupted. “The Connecticut sister from yesterday evening is here to see me, midnight or not. No word on whether she’s brought a gun or a telephone, or neither.”

There was a pause of half a heartbeat, if that, and Archie said, “Are you letting her in?”

“Yes."

“Well,” Archie said, “normally I reserve my social schedule for hours I haven’t already booked for sleeping, but if you want me to call you in thirty minutes, I’ll set an alarm.”

“She might not have come with vengeance in mind, but if you’d like a guarantee on the roadster coming back any time soon, it may be in your best interests.”

“The hell with the roadster,” Archie said emphatically, “if I’m waking up in the middle of the night for a phone call, you’d better be coming back in it.”

“I’m not coming back tonight, whether she has a spare receiver on her or not,” Saul said. The hall outside his door was carpeted, but Vera had legs like a gazelle and a step like a rhinoceros. Saul stood up and tied his robe.

“That’s fine. I’ll ring you at midnight,” Archie said. He sounded about half as piqued and twice as warm now, either at the thought of a visit from Saul or at the prospect of going back to sleep; Saul wouldn’t put his money on his own charm for that one. The doorbell rang.

“Thank you,” Saul said.

“I’d say something polite, but I think the pleasure’s all yours for this one,” Archie said, no less fond for the impudence.

“Probably,” Saul said. “Don’t forget that alarm.”

 

* * *

 

Miss Vera Lachlan looked what a less politic man would call worse for the wear. Saul had never been a model of politesse, and he called it what it was, if not to her face.

“Hello,” he said, steering her toward a chair and then sitting across from it. “It’s too late for conversation, Miss Lachlan, so I’ll just ask. What are you doing here?”

She sat down softer than she walked and smoothed her skirt. She was still damp around the edges, but she wasn’t weeping and didn’t look like she had been for at least three or four minutes. She had her own handkerchief in her purse; Saul could see the lace edge of it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I assume the police station is out for some reason.”

“Yes.”

“And your own home?”

“It’s dangerous,” she said, watery again. “That’s what I realized when they couldn’t find her. Lea, I mean. They don’t know where she is and she isn’t where I said she might be and all I can think is — you may think I’m being paranoid, Mr. Rutger —”

“It’s Panzer,” he interrupted. “Saul Panzer, Miss Lachlan, at your service. The Mister Rutger was just for show.”

“Oh,” she said with feeling, although he wasn’t quite sure which one. “That makes — that makes sense, I suppose. Mr. Panzer. Thank you. I wish you would call me Vera.”

“And I wish the cops could find your sister,” Saul said. “You think she’s at large?”

“I do,” Vera said. “I do, and I worry that it means that she’s planning something horrible, something that would keep me from — from telling on her, if you can call it that. From saying what I know.”

“I might call it that, for you; the cops wouldn’t, though. They call that kind of thing testifying, and they like to call what you’re talking about murder.”

“I know,” she said. “I know, Mr. Panzer, I know it and it eats me up, saying such a thing about my sister, but if you knew her like I do you’d know she _could_ , she could do something so awful as, as —”

“As murder? I’ll surprise you and say that I _do_ know it, Miss Lachlan,” Saul said. “I saw her kill a man in an office for a will. She shot him dead and left him on the floor.”

Vera finally applied herself to her handkerchief. She only dabbed at her eyes, though, not up to making a whole scene. 

“I know,” she said. “And I wish I didn’t think she might kill me too, but I’ve been her sister for twenty-four years, and I’ve only just today realized that she has never done anything to make me think she wouldn’t.” 

That was a bum way to stumble on a bad discovery about the sibling connection. Saul could feel for her. “Have you seen her?” Saul asked. “Since the day she brought you the will?”

“She didn’t bring it to me!” Vera said, lighting a little of the old spark, and Saul got up to find her a drink. She could use it; she had used more than a few up in Hartford, and Saul’s apartment was no starlight garden, not at half past nine packed with champagne and investment bankers, and certainly not at fifteen minutes to midnight with a murderer on the loose.

“No?” Saul said. “How do you take it? Straight?”

She didn’t stop ask what he wanted to put over the ice, or what kind of glass he intended to use for it. “Straight,” she said. She sat up in her chair. “Please.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said. She looked down.

“It is,” she said. “I’m an awful lot of trouble, Mister Rut — Mister Panzer,” she corrected. “I know it, and I never used to be, or maybe I was, and men never told me they minded — oh! Of course they didn’t. I don’t know. Was I taking advantage?” she asked. 

“I’ve met trouble,” Saul told her mildly, “and you’re not much of it, even if you try.”

She took the drink and took advantage of it for a moment, then set it on the table beside her. 

“Lea is,” she said. “Lea has been trouble since she was eight years old, and I think I’ve finally made myself into something wicked, too.”

Saul had never been a man for condolences, and he was just casting into the lake of sympathies for something to say when the lights flickered and went out.

“Excuse me,” Saul said, and got up and went to the piano bench and got out his .45, and a few extra small metal trinkets for good measure. It was a dark and moonless night, as the Gothics liked to go on, but it would take more than a glitch in the electrics and a few night-time clouds to make him forget where he kept his reinforcements.

The doorbell rang, and Vera screamed. It was only a small scream, like the peep of a bird, but it was as good a sign on the door: the victim is in.

“Shh,” Saul hissed. Vera murmured something, soft and, for all Saul knew, wicked; she could call on Satan, as long as it was quiet. He held perfectly still, one hand on the gun. The clock on the wall began to chime, gong after gong, covering the sounds of the tumblers clicking in the lock like it had been told to make a fuss.

“Mister Panzer, who —” Vera whispered.

“Shh!” he said, and the phone started ringing.

The door swung open, spilling light in from the hallway like a train coming down the tracks. Lea was a spectacle in a long green evening dress with a gun in her left hand and a purse in her right, and Vera started screaming like she meant it.

Saul was a good shot at ninety paces, but at ten even a one-eyed sap would have had a hard time whiffing it: Lea had a glint in her eyes and a steadiness to her hand, but even the wickedest woman in the world would go down like a graceful redwood with a .45 slug in her shoulder, and down she went.

Lea screamed, and Vera screamed, and the phone kept ringing until finally it stopped.

 

* * *

 

“Some story,” Cramer said, but he didn’t mean it. He was stuck having his cigar for a midnight snack, but the case was now all sewed up and then some, and Saul didn’t think the inspector was half as bothered by the hour as he was putting on.

“I just tell them,” Saul says. “I don’t ask them to come around, not at midnight, not dressed like that.”

“I guess not,” Cramer said. Vera and Lea were gone, both to the precinct, Lea by the way of Bellevue Hospital but not for long. Saul was a cold-hearted snake who would put a bullet in a woman half his weight, but he knew where it got its best dividends without losing too much in taxes.

The boys from downtown hadn’t asked too many questions, and anyway Saul had a license. He didn’t have a license to have a material witness or a murder suspect in his apartment, but Vera’s crying and the fingerprints on the fusebox had been convincing enough for a hundred juries, much less the few detectives who could deign to drag themselves out of bed.

The lights were back on, and Cramer was the only one left. Saul had a statement to give and the rest of a good night’s sleep to enjoy, but first he had a phone call to make.

“Excuse me,” he said, and dialed.

Fritz answered, in some kind of a state; Saul could have guessed it might be him, but he wouldn’t have guessed at the warmth of feeling it produced.

“Fritz,” Saul said. “It’s me. Archie’s out, is he?”

“Oh!” Fritz said. “I have no idea — you have no idea, I have — he is gone! He is up and gone, the middle of the night, nothing, only he wakes me up to tell me to answer the phone if the police call, and why, why the police at this hour —”

“Fritz,” Saul cut in. “He’s fine. I’m fine. The police are already here and they’re not going anywhere from here but bed, so you don’t have to worry about that. Go back to sleep.”

Fritz hung up with a sound like dry toast for breakfast for a week straight. Saul couldn’t blame him, with that ruckus at this time of night; if Saul was eating crackers and marmalade for a month, it was on him.

“What was that about, Panzer?” Cramer said. “You’re not the type to bother about backup, although what the hell you would need it for now is a mystery to me.”

Saul gave him a shrug, out of generosity. “I’m going to have an unexpected visitor,” he said. “I’ll have to ask you to forgive the state he’s in.”

 

* * *

 

Cramer was more surprised to see Archie than Saul would have bet on; he would have lost five dollars on that double-take. Archie arriving at the scene of a crime at nearly one in the morning would have netted Saul at most fifty cents on a good day, and if Archie arriving anywhere looking like a piece of fish the cat had decided to leave on the street would have once earned him at least two bucks, the last week and a half had shown that Archie could look as rough as the rest of them, if you gave him enough bad luck and time.

“Goodwin!” Cramer cried, choking on his cigar. Archie didn’t bother with a tip of his hat this time; he wasn’t wearing one.

“Why did you take the stairs?” Saul asked. “You must have seen the police car out front.”

“I saw the ambulance, too,” Archie snapped, “and I thought I might take a few extra steps.”

He was livid. Saul was no more a fool now than the last time he’d left Archie fluttering in the breeze and a hair’s breadth from spitting teeth, but this time there were no doors to hide behind and if Archie was going to spit anything Saul was going to have to duck.

Cramer was too close for an apology, though, or any kind of a one that would work on Archie’s nerves.

“I have a statement to make,” Saul told him. “Can I fix you a drink?”

Archie gave him a look that said he was still deciding on whether he was going to take the stairs back down. Saul poured him a Scotch and handed it over. If Archie was leaving in a snit, he would have to have the gumption to take one of Saul’s glasses with him.

He wasn’t leaving yet. He wasn’t saying _thank you_ either, but Saul sometimes thought that it was a miracle that Archie’s mother had made as much headway with him as she had, so he let it go.

“Shall we?” Saul said to Cramer, and they sat down again, Saul in his desk chair and Cramer in the one Vera had been screaming her head off in not twenty-five minutes ago. Archie glowered in the background, which Saul would admit was a good use of what was left of the bruises, if not much of a look as far as Archie’s recent faces had gone.

Saul thought he could get a few of those faces back if he tried, but first he had business to attend to.

 

* * *

 

Archie had contemplated setting his drink down on Saul’s piano not less that half a dozen times during his statement; Saul could see the idea bloom and die like a demented daisy behind his eyes. If Vera Lachlan thought she was something wicked, well, she could take lessons.

His mother’s manners won out in the end, though, and he wound up on the sofa holding a glass of melting ice and his breath as Saul finished out his statement on a high note.

“Well,” Cramer said, “I can’t dock you points you for trying to punch it up. You tell it like it comes to you, and I guess it came right up from the depths tonight.”

Archie was done looking like a bat from somewhere down below, or Saul would have made a crack about not minding everything rising to the surface. As it was, Archie just put his glass on the table with an uncharacteristic heaviness of his hand as Saul saw Cramer to the hall.

“Good night, Panzer,” Cramer said. He glanced at the corner of the room, which was still fuming a little. “If you’re not still open for business, I can get a squad car to take him home.”

Archie squawked. “Thank you, but no thank you,” Saul said. “Inspector.”

Cramer nodded. “Panzer. We won’t call you up unless we can’t get a fix without it,” he said. Saul closed the door behind him and turned around.

“If business hours are over, I’ll take a receipt home with me,” Archie said, standing. “Maybe I could come back when I have a wage to earn.”

“Did you wander by in search of a paycheck, then?” Saul said, tucking his hands into his pockets, and Archie stopped, halfway to the door, on the soft blue carpet that wrapped around to the entryway.

He was still mad, but now he looked less like a dog denied a bone and more like cracked plaster.

He looked like Saul had taken his precious roadster and run it into the Hudson and then tossed him the keys, and if Saul had been a betting man he would have been fleeced tonight, by God. Saul had seen the fight go out of Archie not more than two or three times before, and never over something personal.

“ _Saul_ ,” Archie said.

“I know what you thought,” Saul said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Archie’s illness of the morning seemed to have caught back up with him, and he kept his mouth shut for a long moment. “That’s something,” he said finally. “I don’t know what you expect to get for it, but it’s something.”

Saul needed to throw the locks and set his alarm clock. If he was feeling gracious, he could even ring the brownstone one last time to let Fritz know that neither of them had fallen prey to loose bullets or pretty faces, in an effort to stave off despair and a severely curbed dinner menu for the week.

Saul needed to cut the lights and go to bed, but he wouldn’t like the dreams he had if he fell asleep without fixing the look on Archie’s face.

“I don’t expect much,” Saul said. “I only expect you to wake up in the middle of the night, hail a cab, dodge the cops, and run up five flights of stairs with a gun in your hand.”

Archie blinked. “I —”

“Don’t think I didn’t see you tucking it away when Cramer opened the door.”

“I know you did,” Archie said, clipped and annoyed. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

With that tone of voice he almost sounded like his regular self. Saul smiled. “I’m just telling you what I expect,” he said. “It’s not much more than you normally do, and anyway I don’t mean to make a habit of it.”

Archie gave him the same look he’d given Saul that very first day he’d walked into the office, seen Saul in the red leather chair, talking to Wolfe, and assumed Saul had come around with an eye to get paid to put his own feet up on Archie’s desk. 

“You had damn well better not,” Archie said. “I’m in no shape for it, expectations or not. I’m surprised I made it at all.”

“I’m not,” Saul said. “Granted, I should have gotten even odds from a bookie that you might not wake back up on time, but that was factored into the evening.”

“Nuts.” Archie had all of his color back, and then some. Saul let him stew while he turned the locks, then he put his shoulders against the door again.

“Don’t fuss,” Saul told him. “I would have gotten my money back and then some if I’d put down a bet that you’d come when you were called. As it was I only bet my life.”

It went over about as well as Saul might have guessed. Archie opened his mouth, took a breath, and closed it. He stretched out the fingers of his right hand and then closed them, too, like he had just gotten an idea in the original Latin but didn’t know the translation yet.

“I know,” Archie said in plain English, evidently not up to writing out the interpretation of whatever he’d been thinking.

“If you wanted to high-tail it out of here with Cramer, I’m sorry,” Saul said. “If you wanted to skip the alarm and sleep in, I’m even sorrier, and if you wanted to spend the night without wondering if I was more susceptible to a pretty face than you had been given to believe, then I’ll repent it until judgment day, but I appreciate the chance to pay penance face to face, if you want it.”

“Penance?” Archie said. “If you want penance I can just go to the window and think about hurling myself out, and you can see how you like being too slow to catch me.” He put his hands in his pockets, and then on second thought immediately took them out again.

So he was still sore, but he was starting to come around. Saul risked taking a step forward. “It’s all right if you don’t know how to get started,” he said. “I can lead again, if you remember the music.”

“Sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Archie said, glaring at him, but he clearly still didn’t know what to do with his hands, and Saul thought he might have another step and a half before Archie tried making up some dance steps of his own.

“One of us has to be,” Saul said civilly.

“The hell with you.”

“Which one?” Saul asked. “The one you came up out of, or the one you’re going to?”

Archie swallowed, evidently too caught up in what was left of his ill humor to give Saul’s redirection his full attention yet. He looked at the floor, and then he reached up and started undoing his cuffs. His jacket was still slumped over the chair he’d been using to scowl at Cramer and Saul with full effect.

“Listen,” Archie said, folding his cuffs loosely up his forearms. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, and I certainly can’t believe that you’d pay attention, but for all that I sound as irrational as Wolfe in a bad mood without any lunch on the way, it will be said: never, under any circumstance, do that to me again.”

“All right,” Saul said. “I swear on my grandmother’s grave, I won’t. Do you mean don’t call you next time, or don’t park the ambulance on the stoop?”

“Both,” Archie said. “Neither. You can leave the police in the closet, for that matter, and the dame in the kitchen, so I don’t have to see any of it. It’s bad for my constitution.”

He got done with his sleeves and looked up. Saul smiled. “I have more Scotch,” he offered, “if it’s your constitution that needs work.”

Archie glanced at his glass of wet ice with a soft laugh. “Needs work,” he said. “No, that’s not necessary. You know,” he said ruefully, “if you were a dame I might know what to do with myself right now.” He met Saul’s eyes, all embarrassed farm-grown cornflower blue hidden behind his lashes, and Saul thought that if one of them was playing the dame here, it wasn’t him.

“That’s fine,” Saul said graciously. “I’ll show you.”

Archie remembered. He remembered what to do with his hands now, and where to put his feet, and he knew what to do with his chin. Saul felt one of Archie’s broad palms slip tentatively around his waist to the middle of his back, and then Saul open his mouth and gently worried Archie’s lower lip, and Archie’s hand got a lot less tentative.

Saul had a good idea of what to do with his own hands; he had a lot of good ideas, and most of his attention was on not having too many of them at once, too fast. Good ideas had the tendency to drown out good intentions, and between the two of them it looked like it might be on Saul to produce most of the latter. He ran his hand up Archie’s shoulder to his neck and braced it there, digging his fingers into the base of Archie’s skull.

Archie whimpered, low in his throat.

When Saul pulled briefly away, Archie’s skin was flushed pink, his pulse fluttering in his throat, and Saul was not a saint.

Saul flexed his fingers, pushing at the firm muscle of Archie’s neck. He brought his other hand up to mirror it and felt Archie make a shocked, urgent noise as his lips parted and his tongue slid into Saul’s mouth.

The road to hell was getting its potholes patched tonight.

“Archie,” Saul broke off, getting about half an inch of clearance before Archie started crowding him, backing him toward the doorway. “Goodwin, are you sure —”

Archie was sure, or he was sure he didn’t want to wait around for the rest of Saul’s question: he got both of Saul’s shoulders in his grip as Saul’s back reached the wall, and then Saul was treated to the overwhelming, unprecedented sensation of Archie Goodwin’s long, well-formed front pressed up against him stem to stern.

Hell was right. Hell was — Archie was kissing him with more than a little fire, breathing fast. No one was playing the dame now. In fact, a forgotten, archival portion of Saul’s brain was frantically suggesting that if Archie continued his particular assault, it would become very quickly and blatantly obvious just how little anyone involved was any kind of dame.

“Archie,” Saul gasped out, reaching up to grab a handful of Archie’s hair and pulling, and Archie went with a shudder, his body suddenly, scorchingly pliant against Saul.

_Oh_ , Saul thought, choking on his breath. Archie’s eyes were wide open and dark, dark blue. There went any last good intentions.

Archie was silent except for the labored rasp of his breathing as Saul directed him carefully through the living room toward the bedroom, and Saul thought that if he could get Archie to be this malleable and silent every time, he might even consider kissing Archie on the job.

The backs of Archie’s knees ran up against the mattress like a ship on the shore and then gave out. Saul looked down at him, mussed and red-cheeked up on his elbows against the dark green of the duvet, breathing quick and off-tempo as a jazz band, and firmly revised his consideration. If he could get Archie like this every time, Saul wouldn’t be on any job no matter where he decided to kiss Archie.

He stepped between Archie’s knees and tried to recall the sequence of events, or at least tried to set some semblance of an agenda.

“How do you like it?” Saul asked, dropping this hands to untuck Archie’s shirttails; he thought that might be the most minor order of business to attend to, and starting small was never a bad idea. 

“Hell if I know,” Archie said roughly, obligingly lifting his hips. Once that motion was passed, Saul started on the next item on the floor: the top buttons of Archie’s shirt. “This isn’t exactly my field of expertise.”

“What are you, a monk?” Saul said. “Not to impugn your character, but I might have thought that a man like you would have devoted himself to some study of the classics.” He pushed the fabric of Archie’s shirt aside, and good God. 

“A _man_ like —” Archie started, winding his beautiful mouth up to start it running again, so Saul reached down and dragged his fingernails gently down the expanse of temptation at his disposal.

A new miracle every week: Archie sucked on air and abruptly stopped talking.

His skin was hot under Saul’s hands, smooth as sand. He had a scar just above his hip from his appendix taking after him and causing all the trouble it could when he was fifteen. It shone silvery-white under Saul’s fingers as he traced the ridge of bone.

“Oh,” Archie whispered, shaky as a sapling in high wind. His head was tilted back against the bedcovers, the long line of his throat a perfect arch. Saul’s agenda was gone; he was beginning to worry that he had overestimated his own ability to follow the rules of order. Archie’s nipples were drawn up, tight dark brown washed red by the flush running down his chest.

“God,” Archie cried, sharp and desperate, when Saul rolled one between his fingertips, “oh hell, I — _oh_ —” and Saul had not accounted for the extent to which rendering Archie temporarily incoherent had an effect on him.

Saul was blindingly hard; Saul was distantly aware that he was breathing like a Triple Crown winner.

Saul pinched a little harder, and Archie’s thighs pressed into the outside of Saul’s knees as the last of Saul’s thoughts fled his mind for greener pastures. Archie was panting, quick and loud, when Saul leaned down to kiss him again, and it made it easy to distract him from Saul’s hands at his belt. He made a short, impatient noise when Saul finally corralled all the necessary vestments onto the floor where they belonged, and then he jerked his head back and almost bit Saul’s tongue when Saul touched palm to skin.

Saul straightened up to check for trouble, but Archie wasn’t biting on anything now, or if he was Saul couldn’t see it: he had his head flung back and his arm pressed over his own face like something out of an overwrought Gothic. Saul thought that if he wasn’t quite so invested himself, he’d take a moment out of the scene to give him grief for it.

As it was, Archie was too beautiful to mock and too keyed-up to make wait; even with his mouth covered and his eyes closed, he was making sounds that forced Saul to grit his teeth and slow down, just to see if he could make him make them again.

He could. Saul was no monk himself, but even accounting for comparative decades of experience, Archie was surprisingly easy. Saul slowed down again despite himself; Archie couldn’t seem to stop his back from twisting against the bed as Saul’s fingers played along the length of his cock. Saul ran his free hand up Archie’s ribs to his chest and Archie groaned into his forearm like Saul was tearing him in half.

It was too much, Archie’s skin soft with sweat and his cock slick under Saul’s hand, and it wasn’t enough. Archie was the picture of a debauched ingenue, but wherever he was being debauched was a million miles away from Saul’s bedroom; Saul couldn’t tell if it was modesty or an issue with the persistent lack of female company, but whatever it was, it was taking the edge off of things for Saul, and not in a good way. Saul pinched the skin over Archie’s ribs a little harder than was polite.

Archie jerked, hard, against both of Saul’s hands. Saul sped up with his right and got a grip on Archie’s wrist with his left, pulling until Archie let him have it.

Saul could have thought this through. Archie’s mouth was bruised red and slack, his arm imprinted with a ring of vicious-looking toothmarks. The noises he was making now were liable to get the cops back here before the sun was up.

Saul’s only defense was to press his palm to Archie’s cheek and his thumb to Archie’s lower lip. Archie’s eyes fluttered open.

He could have thought this through and then some.

“Saul,” Archie gasped against his thumb. “Saul, please.”

Archie a million miles from here while Saul put his hands on him was bad enough; Archie half a foot away and shaking like he had the Spanish ‘flu while Saul’s hands sent him past the point of begging was too much to stand. Saul gave in to the undeniable impulse to slide his thumb into Archie’s mouth and press down just hard enough to feel the edge of his teeth.

He had meant it as a simple second of insanity before he took pity and kissed him, but Archie made a stifled, strangled moan before the whole warm, breath-taking length of his body arched back on the bed. Saul twisted his hand on Archie’s cock and pressed down again.

Archie losing his mind was a special sort of gorgeous, but Archie coming with a soft, helpless whine was a vista that Saul would never forget.

Saul did kiss him, then. Archie was soft-mouthed and slow, all his former technique apparently wrung out of him like a wet towel. Saul gentled him through it as best he could, considering their current and abrupt difference in motivations.

“Christ,” Archie murmured, finally getting a few muscles to move. Saul pulled back and made an effort to control himself.

“You don’t need to sound so shocked,” Saul said with admirable calm. “What were you expecting?”

“I told you, I didn’t know,” Archie said. His eyes were clearing, a flicker of light winking to life behind them.

“Naturally,” Saul said. “Devoted as you are to your work, the mysteries of the flesh might have remained forever lost to you without my interference.”

“I’ll have you know I am sometimes a man of considerable restraint.”

“Archie,” Saul replied, “did you forget that I was there when your shoes first graced the carpet of Wolfe’s study?”

Archie pushed up onto his elbows, and Saul lost the rest of his retort into Archie’s lips.

“Anyway,” Archie said, “I can’t be blamed for a little innocence. Many people have tried to shut me up, but it’s still a novelty to for a man put his hands to service that way —”

“‘Hands’,” Saul said derisively, kissing Archie’s chin. “I ought to shut you up for real, for that.”

He was close enough to hear Archie’s breath as it whispered sharply past his lips. Saul looked up at him.

“And what would that take?” Archie asked, just the tip of his tongue touching the edge of his lower lip. Saul tried his damnedest not to think about that mouth anywhere near his cock.

“Knowing you? An act of God.”

“I’m serious.”

“Oh, are you? I’ll phone the papers,” Saul said, letting Archie pull him down and lay him across the bed. “It will give me time to figure out what to tell Wolfe. ‘I’m sorry, sir, it was bound to happen sometime, but I’m afraid he’s finally cracked. No, sir, I can’t tell you what brought it on.’ Ouch,” he said as Archie’s incisors acquainted themselves with his collarbone. “I’m surprised I let my hands anywhere near your mouth, with teeth like that.”

Archie flashed him a grin that showed off said teeth to unfairly endearing advantage, then bent his head to work on Saul’s shirt-front.

He got farther than Saul would have credited him to do: he didn’t pause until Saul’s trousers and underwear were at his thighs and his shirt was only clinging by the cuffs, and then he gave Saul a slow, careful survey that ended at his eyes.

“Well,” Archie said, very nearly hiding the nerves in his voice, “this is where the mysteries of the flesh remain lost to me, though hopefully not forever.”

“Not that I expect you to listen,” Saul said, “but you’re welcome to stick to the charted territory if you like.”

All that netted him was Archie laughing in his face just before he kissed him, which was no more than Saul would have predicted or deserved. Archie Goodwin was not one to back down from a challenge, and certainly not one he thought he could finesse on charm alone. His lips met Saul’s cheek, his jaw, his neck, lingering at the base of his throat.

Saul wasn’t a monk and he wasn’t a liar, at least not to himself. Archie could probably finesse almost anything on charm; Saul was no exception.

Archie abandoned charm right about the time his mouth made it to Saul’s sternum. He kissed the skin halfway between Saul’s chin and his navel, and then he took a soft breath and wrapped his hand around Saul’s cock, hardly any pressure to it.

“Shit,” Saul gritted out, before he could bite his tongue. He hoped to hell Archie wasn’t expecting directions; he was too far gone for bullet-points or diagrams.

Archie wasn’t: he didn’t need any. Saul closed his eyes and tried to breathe as Archie worked him over, too good to stand and only barely too careful to push him past the edge. Archie kissed him again, in the same spot, and then slightly lower, and Saul felt his cock jerk helplessly in Archie’s hand.

Archie’s tongue dragged quickly over his hipbone like quicksilver, there and gone in an instant. Saul swallowed profanities and pressed his face sideways into the covers.

“Christ,” Archie said roughly. Saul forced his eyes open and threw a glance down his body, then immediately regretted it. Mysteries remaining or no, Archie made one hell of a picture.

“What?” Saul managed.

“You don’t,” Archie stared up at him for a moment. “I’ve never seen you anything like this.”

Saul looked at him like he was crazy. “I should hope not,” he gasped. A considering look dashed over Archie’s face, and Saul thought he saw his life flash before his eyes.

He had. Archie frowned briefly and moved eight inches to the left and kept his hand moving as he slowly, cautiously ran his tongue over the head of Saul’s cock.

“Oh, God,” Saul said. “ _God_ , ah, Archie —”

He held on until Archie got the gumption to open his mouth and take what he could for one long, heart-stopping moment, and then Saul got a hand in his hair and moved him out of the way before he gave in and came hard enough to lose his breath.

Archie was lying next to him when he came around, watching him with a look that should have made Saul nervous. As it was, he was beginning to think not all of Archie’s ideas were frank madness. Some of them might even have a grain of merit.

“Whatever you’re planning, it can wait until the morning,” Saul said. “Are you taking the roadster home, or should I phone Fritz so he doesn’t keep you locked out on the stoop tomorrow morning?"

“He would never,” Archie said.

“One day he will, but I admit he finds it hard to deny any man breakfast, even if he’s just given him the fright of his life. All right, you just lie there and look pretty,” Saul said, briskly tidying himself and finding his dressing-gown. “I’ll be right back.”

Archie’s indignant remark didn’t quite reach the door.

“Hello, Fritz,” Saul said the instant the receiver picked up.

“I take it everything is fine now,” Fritz said icily, and Saul smiled.

“You take it correctly, although there was plenty of trouble,” Saul said. “Guns and women and criminals _and_ the police, so don’t blame Archie too much for dashing off without the proper goodbyes.”

“Archie! Huh! I blame you. When is he coming home? I will lock the doors if it is too long, you know. I have to sleep.”

“You might. He’s not.”

There was an almost imperceptible pause, and then Fritz said, not all that worried, “Is he injured?”

“No. He got here too late for that.”

“Perhaps the car is not working,” Fritz said speculatively. “Perhaps there are no taxis at this time of night, in midtown Manhattan. It is so very desolate sometimes.”

“Fritz.”

“I am only thinking sympathetically of the many trials you both must have faced.”

“I thought you had to sleep.”

“Then I will, old friend,” Fritz said. Saul could hear the amused, patient expression on his face, waltzing its way through the telephone wires like a ballroom dancer. “Even if I am curious what bad decision he has made today.”

“No need to get insulting,” Saul said lightly. “Of all the decisions he’s made, I ought to be somewhere near the top.”

This time the silence was full perceptible, and it lasted a full second or more.

“No,” Fritz breathed.

“Mm.”

“Saul.”

“What?”

“ _No._ ”

“What do you think? Would I lie to you?” Saul said, grinning at the telephone desk, and Fritz laughed.

“Does he know he is a fool?” Fritz said fondly.

“If he doesn’t, I’ll make sure it’s in the next lesson,” Saul said. “God knows I’ve already learned it myself a few times over.”

“Good night,” Fritz said. “I will see you both in the morning, or later in the morning, in any case.”

“You’ll see him,” Saul tried.

“I will see you both,” Fritz said again, “or I will be only asking him what has gone on.”

“Fine, you’ll see us both,” Saul said. “Night, Fritz.”

Archie was sitting up in Saul’s bed in a set of stolen pajamas reading The Collected Works of William Butler Yeats by the light of the lamp.

“Well?” Saul said.

“Well what?” Archie said, raising an eyebrow. “Are you asking for my literary opinion? More pastures than I’m generally interested in, although it’s nice to know that I can still be confused by poetry.”

“Thank God for constant truths,” Saul said. Archie closed the book and set it on the bedside table.

“Is that all?” Archie said, as Saul turned back the covers and slid in beside him, not too close.

“Fritz has invited us both to breakfast,” Saul offered. “He didn’t invite us to decline.”

“Fine,” Archie said. “I admit I’m not expecting to miss breakfast, or any meal with Fritz, for this.” He angled a glance at Saul. “I’d be surprised if you put up resistance to that, frankly.”

“Get the lamp, will you?” Saul said. Archie complied. “What are you expecting, then?”

He had told Fritz the truth: he was as much a fool as Archie, maybe more. There was a reason that reprobates stuck together, and Archie was not frivolous but he was sometimes flighty. Saul wasn’t looking forward to missing breakfast either, if it came down to one of them or the other.

“Oh, not much,” Archie said, his voice pleasant in the darkness. “I only expect loyalty, intelligence, humor, patience, and discretion. It wouldn’t hurt if you knew how to dance.”

“You know I do,” Saul retorted brusquely. “You can’t mean to take me dancing.”

“Saul,” Archie said, and his hand brushed gently against Saul’s shoulder, then settled down like a cat on the windowsill. “You wouldn’t want to go out dancing even if we could. I’m only making plans for the living room; Lily can take care of the Flamingo Room for me.”

“I’m sure she can,” Saul said, more politely. No use borrowing trouble, not when it came so naturally to Archie anyway; there would always be more to come, and Saul had already bought stock in this business. He wouldn’t get anything out of withdrawing his investments now.

“I never do forget,” Archie said.

“Forget what?”

“You were there when my footsteps first darkened Wolfe’s door. You would have been there longer if you’d wanted to, which you didn’t and still don’t, and while I have stopped worrying about losing possession of my desk, I have never imagined this job without you around.”

“You’ve never imagined this, either,” Saul pointed out.

“All right, fine,” Archie said. “I will say that it wasn’t hard to start. I have never imagined this _town_ without you around, and as I have no intention of going back to Ohio any time soon, I’ll put down that I also expect that you and I will always figure a way to work things out.”

“Say I believe you,” Saul started, and then Archie’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“Say you do,” he said, “I’m going to sleep.”

 

* * *

 

They said up to a thousand people could live in one Midtown block alone. They said there were one point nine million people in Manhattan, and more coming every day. They filled the sidewalks and the restaurants, but somewhere in between them there was still space for people like him.

Somewhere in between was everyone and everything else, space for almost anything you could want or imagine, as long as you didn’t want or imagine anything too improbable.

Saul never had before, and in the leftover ticks of the second-hand between when Archie fell asleep and when Saul stopped imagining and joined him, he didn’t think he was now.

 


End file.
